Tag Archives: Center for Strategic and International Studies

As American experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan have shown, jihadists will continue their struggle irrespective of socioeconomic improvements instituted by governments. Such societal material efforts can only be complementary to combatting the ideology of hardcore Islamists whose motivations lie beyond temporal benefits. American policymakers are apparently slowing learning this lesson once again in Nigeria.

(12/12/13 Washinngton, DC) American officials previously “did everything they could to push that idea” about Nigeria’s Boko Haram’s Islamist ideology aside, Ann Buwalda of the Christian human rights organization Jubilee Campaign stated at a November 14, 2013, Hudson Institute panel. If past is any prologue, a jihad understanding of Boko Haram will have to struggle against attributions of violence in Nigeria to socioeconomic disparities, recent American policymaker statements notwithstanding.

Abubakar Shekau, leader of Islamic terror group Boko Haram

Developmental neglect in Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north as the identified motive in an estimated 4,000 killings by Boko Haram since 2009 has a long history among American policymakers. Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Johnnie Carson, for example, expressed such views at a March 24, 2013, hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in an April 9, 2012, address to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “Boko Haram,” he stated, “capitalizes on popular frustrations with the nation’s leaders, poor government service delivery, and the dismal living conditions of many northerners.” A a “new social compact” with northern Nigeria along with a “security strategy” were necessary.

By contrast, Carson sought “to stress that religion is not driving extremist violence” in Nigeria. “Nigeria’s religious and ethnic diversity is one of its greatest strengths,” Carson said, “and there are many examples of communities working together to protect each other.” Carson seemingly spoke of equal opportunity killing in “Boko Haram’s attacks on churches and mosques,” yet Jubilee Campaign and others note the disproportionate concentration of Boko Haram upon Christian targets.

“Boko Haram is focused primarily on local Nigerian issues,” Carson judged. Only within Boko Haram had a “smaller more dangerous group, increasingly sophisticated and increasingly lethal…developed links with AQIM [Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb] and has a broader, anti-Western jihadist agenda.” As one article noted, Carson spoke at CSIS the day after a Boko Haram car bombing killed 39 at a Nigerian Easter church service, one of many attacks on church holiday services like Christmas.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R., Texas) offered a searing indictment of the Obama administration’s “wait and see diplomacy” during a wide ranging foreign policy speech Wednesday that focused on what he dubbed the president’s failure to lead.

Obama’s indecision and failure to take a stand in Syria, Egypt, and elsewhere in the world have emboldened America’s enemies and allowed extremists to galvanize greater support, McCaul said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“That lack of clarity isn’t just confusing, it’s dangerous,” McCaul said. “One cannot lead if they refuse to accept reality.”

Obama is misleading the American public about the threats posed to America by radical extremists, he added.

“The battlefield is now everywhere,” McCaul said. “The president likes to deliver speeches. What he may not realize is his words have a practical application.”

Radicals across the world were listening when Obama declared earlier this year that the war on terrorism is coming to an end, McCaul said.

“Publicly downgrading a real threat which is growing only emboldens our enemies and sends a signal we lack resolve,” McCaul said.

Such declarations also degrade the morale of America’s fighting forces, he said.

“Rhetoric has a ripple effect,” McCaul warned. “I believe the president should be more careful.”

Broad statements about ending the global war on terror “do not constitute a counterterrorism policy,” McCaul added. “Words cannot simply wish it away.”

While “declaring the war over is a popular thing to do politically … misleading the American people with a false narrative does them a great disservice,” McCaul said. “The reality is the threats we faced on Sept. 10, [2001], exist today.”

The Obama administration has systematically ignored and downplayed the threat that Muslim extremists pose to America, McCaul said.

From the Fort Hood shooting to the Benghazi, Libya, attacks, as well as the Boston Marathon bombing, team Obama has avoided using terms such as “radical Islam,” McCaul said.

“The administration may think by taking the war on terror and radical Islam out of the conversation it will help end the conflict. But in reality you cannot defeat an enemy you are unwilling to define,” McCaul said.

The new wave of Egypt spin relies on admitting that yes Morsi and the Brotherhood abused power and marginalized everyone but the Islamists, but if they’re removed from power, they will become “radicalized”.

The Obama administration’s call for an “inclusive” political process in Egypt with a role for the Muslim Brotherhood has been overshadowed by conflict between security forces and supporters of the Islamist group.

That sentence and the thinking behind it is completely and entirely ridiculous. More so than a dozen Monty Python skits wired together.

The administration has urged the Egyptian military to stop using heavy-handed tactics against the Brotherhood, according to two U.S. officials who asked not to be identified commenting on private communications. They said the administration is concerned that some in the military may want to provoke the Islamists to violence and provide a rationale for crushing the movement once and for all.

The Brotherhood was using violence before Morsi was elected, while Morsi was in office and after Morsi was removed. But as usual we’re supposed to tremble in fear of a radicalized Brotherhood using violence. When the Brotherhood is already radical and already uses violence.

Such a move would fail and probably prompt a shift to al-Qaeda type terrorist tactics by extremists in the Islamist movement in Egypt and elsewhere, the U.S. officials said.

Would that be worse than having a country run by Al-Qaeda’s allies?

Locking out the Muslim Brotherhood from the early elections promised by the military “would be a cure worse than the ill, almost certainly driving Islamist groups underground and giving rise to a generation of radicalized Islamists, in Egypt and beyond, who will have lost faith in peaceful, democratic change,” the International Crisis Group, a New York-based organization that offers recommendations to policy makers, said in a July 3 statement.

Thanks George Soros. Please tell us more about how the Brotherhood practiced peaceful change?

Participating in politics means agreeing that differences will be settled through political means, said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy group.

Is a brutal tyranny that destroys the rights of Christians and women, among others, better if it uses political means to take power?

A crackdown on the Brotherhood by Egyptian authorities in the early 1950s contributed to its radicalization. After an army coup ousted Egypt’s monarchy in 1952, the Brotherhood was accused of trying to assassinate the president. The party was banned and thousands of its members were tortured, imprisoned and held for years.

Was the Brotherhood, which allied with the Nazis during WW2, moderate before the 1950s?

Members of the group counseled a young Osama bin Laden in Saudi Arabia, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks, was a member of the Brotherhood before joining al-Qaeda. Ayman al Zawahiri, the current al-Qaeda leader, also was a member.

New special bedfellow joins the Jihad to support Morsi “against the coup”

None other than the supreme commander of al Qaeda, Dr Ayman Zawahiri, has declared his Jihad in support of the return of Mohammed Morsi to power, and “a fight with blood and flesh against the seculars, reformers, liberals, military and Christians of Egypt.” Zawahiri’s declaration makes it clear as stated by Dream TV in Cairo, “that the so-called difference between so-called Ikhwan moderates and Jihadists has vanished.” Now al Qaeda is in the same trenches as the Muslim Brotherhood. An observer in Washington noted that “since al Qaeda is now an ally to the Ikhwan and will fight for Morsi against the people and the Army in Egypt, it would be very odd to side with this alliance. If the US is at war with al Qaeda, it would be against US national security to side with the Brotherhood-AQ alliance against Egypt’s people and army.”

Brennan gave a speech to Islamic law students at New York University, where he was introduced by Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America. Mattson, who had been involved with the Obama inaugural prayer service, had come under fire then for her organization’s longstanding terrorist support.

During his NYU speech, Brennan defended the administration’s highly unpopular move to try al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court (which the administration eventually backed away from). He claimed that terrorists are the real victims of “political, economic and social forces,” said that Islamic terrorists were not jihadists, referenced “Al-Quds” instead of Jerusalem, and described the 20 percent of former Guantanamo detainees returning to terrorist activities as “not that bad” when compared to ordinary criminal recidivism.

During a talk at the Nixon Center in May 2010, Brennan said that the administration was looking for ways to build up “moderate elements” of the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah.

Two weeks later, at a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Brennan defended the Islamic doctrines of jihad as “a holy struggle” and “a legitimate tenet of Islam.”

a known top U.S. Hamas official had been given a guided tour of the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center and FBI Academy at Quantico under Brennan’s watch, several former top intelligence and defense officials again called for his resignation.

Last month, it was revealed that Brennan was implicated in a serious intelligence breach detailing an ongoing counterterrorism operation led by British and Saudi intelligence agencies that had placed an operative deep inside the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) organization. The White House leak forced the termination of the operation and the immediate withdrawal of the double agent, infuriating our foreign intelligence allies.

Just two weeks ago, internal White House documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a FOIA request revealed that Brennan and other White House officials had met twice with Hollywood filmmakers preparing a movie about the killing of Osama bin Laden, providing them unparalleled access including the identity of a SEAL Team 6 operator and commander along with other classified information. Amazingly, these high-level White House meetings between Brennan and the Hollywood filmmakers took place just weeks after the Pentagon and CIA had publicly warned of the dangers posed by leaks surrounding the successful SEAL raid killing bin Laden.

And if you still have any more doubts, here’s John Brennan’s views on terrorism direct from that notorious right-wing fearmongering outlet, The Nation

Brennan had told me (before taking a job in the Obama administration, but while serving as Obama’s top adviser on intelligence issues) that talking to Hamas and Hezbollah is the right thing to do.

For the United States, supporting democratic transitions is not a matter of idealism. It is a strategic necessity.

It might be more of a strategic necessity for China and Russia, considering that the democratic transition replaced allies with Islamist enemies. It’s obviously a strategic necessity for Huma Abedin and her friends. But it’s a strategic disaster for us.

And we will not return to the false choice between freedom and stability. And we will not pull back our support for emerging democracies when the going gets rough. That would be a costly strategic mistake that would, I believe, undermine both our interests and our values.

How would abandoning Islamists be a betrayal of either our interests or our values?

Do our interests lie with the Muslim Brotherhood? Do our values? Do Hillary Clinton’s values or interests align with movements that call for the destruction of Israel and oppose a woman or non-Muslim running Egypt.

So we have mobilized more than $1 billion in targeted assistance since the start of the revolutions. And the Obama Administration has requested from Congress a new $770 million fund that would be tied to concrete benchmarks for political and economic reforms. And I again urge Congress to move forward on this priority.

Yes, please Congress. Send more money so that the Muslim Brotherhood can dig deep into Egypt and turn it into another Iran.

Consider Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab revolutions. Last year, an Islamist party won a plurality of the votes in an open, competitive election. I know some in Washington took this as an omen of doom. But these new leaders formed a coalition with secular parties and promised to uphold universal rights and freedoms, including for women

Yes and in private they were conspiring with Salafists to eliminate universal rights and freedoms as a recently released video shows.